Adding MachinesStylus-Operated Adding Machines
In 1642, while he was still a teenager, the Frenchman Blaise Pascal invented one of the first machines that could add automatically. Numbers were entered by rotating wheels with a pointed rod or stylus. Carrying took place through the fall of a weight. Some fifty copies of Pascal’s machine were made in his lifetime, mainly for the cabinets of curiosity of well-to-do nobles. In the eighteenth century, similar machines were made, such as one build by Jean Lepine, clockmaker and mechanician to French King Louis XV. In Lepine’s elegant brass machine, carrying took place through the flex of a spring, not the fall of a weight.
In the second half of the 19th century, a variety of much humbler stylus-operated adding machines were patented in the United States. At least three of them went on the market. Two, based on inventions of John Groesbeck and of A. M. Stephenson, had modest sales. The third, invented by journalist Charles H. Webb and sold as the Webb adder, was a sufficient commercial success to boast distinct models, patented in 1868 and 1889.
A.M. Stephenson described a small adding machine with several dials, but only sold one that handled two digits. In the 1840s the Frenchman Didier Roth had designed an improved stylus-operated adding machine that was small and light weight, but had several dials. Roth did not sell his machines successfully, but in the early 20th century such instruments became quite common. One of the first to sell widely in the U.S. was the Calcumeter, patented by James J. Walsh of New Jersey in 1901. Similar instruments, made from metal or later plastic, would sell into the 1970s.
Other small adding machines had parallel rods or chains that moved either crosswise or from top to bottom. Some of these looked quite a bit like contemporary adders, although they had a mechanical carry.
"Adding Machines - Stylus-Operated Adding Machines" showing 1 items.
- This four-wheeled stylus-operated adding machine has two copper-colored wheels for cents and two silver-colored wheels for dollars. There are numbers on the cover around each wheel. No complementary digits are indicated. Above the wheels are four windows that indicate the total. At the back is a plastic container for the metal stylus. Inside the lid of the case is a so-called magic slate for jotting down and erasing numbers. The adding machine, stylus, and slate fit in an aluminum case. The instrument is marked: Ken + Add MACHINES CO. DULUTH, MINN. U.S.A. PATENT APPLIED FOR.
- An account of the Ken + Add appeared in Mathematics Teacher in December 1952, where it was recommended not only as a practical adding machine but as a fascinating toy and an aid to arithmetic teaching. It was advertised in Arithmetic Teacher as late as 1956.
- P. A. Kidwell, A. Ackerberg-Hastings, and D. L. Roberts, Tools of American Mathematics Teaching 1800-2000 , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, pp. 248-249.
- Currently not on view
- date made
- Ken + Add Machines Co.
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- catalog number
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- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center